IP publishing rate over time reveals that it is related to the price of oil (offset by a few years for the IP to be published).Peaks occur following the 1973 oil boycott followed by the second rise after the Iranian Revolution (second oil shock) but fell when oil slipped in price int he 1980's and finally peaking again in 2008 as oil approached $100/barrel. High oil prices lead to seaches for alternative energy while low prices damp it.
Umicore's key area of product development are Europe (Germany, Belgium, France and Switzerland) and the US
Top cited recent Umicore diesel patent, cited by catalyst and vehicle companies. No self cites by Umicore may indicate a weakness in intellectual asset management skills (IAM).
IP publishing rate over time reveals that it is related to the price of oil (offset by a few years for the IP to be published).Peaks occur following the 1973 oil boycott followed by the second rise after the Iranian Revolution (second oil shock) but fell when oil slipped in price int he 1980's and finally peaking again in 2008 as oil approached $100/barrel. High oil prices lead to seaches for alternative energy while low prices damp it.
Portfolio Mining:
Within a company, I take a high level look at the IP including number and velocity of the documents, where they were developed and filed, who are the key inventors, what is the top cited IP. I then and cluster it into catagories. I then determine the art in each of these area and find the key IP.
In this example, I look at Umicore, originally a mining company that has moved from mining to specific use of speciality materials. It has 4 operating areas: Energy Materials, Recycling, Catalysis, and Performance Materials.
Since 1994 there are 1073 patent familes published and that the IP velocity has been increasing since 2008; most of the art has been developed in Europe (Germany, Belgium, France, Switzerland) and the US. There are a few reasonablyhighly cited documents, many very recent. The entire portfolio is then segmented by topic area.
For example, examining the catalyst documents (from cluster) which are likely part of the Catalysis Division reveals 369 documents; 65 of these are related to diesel catalysts. One recent document US2010058746 has already attracted 17 citations from catalyst and automotive/vehicle companies. Diesel catalysts from Umicore include Pt/Pd/Au for exhaust gas oxidation, rare earth oxides, ZrO, and/or urea for NOx destruction and ceramic filters for diesel particle collection (and subsequent destruction).
I conclude that each of the business sectors have IP that support them. The catalyst group has IP that is valued by its competitors (BASF, Johnson-Mathey and Haldor Topsoe) as well as vehicle companies.
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